


In the Eyes of a Child

by Gallons_of_the_Stuff



Series: Camp Hogwarts Challenge [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Challenges, Family, Fantasy, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 01:10:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4371404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gallons_of_the_Stuff/pseuds/Gallons_of_the_Stuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Mishap Ratchet went to Hogwarts was not, in fact, when she was eleven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Eyes of a Child

**Author's Note:**

> One-shot written for the Camp Hogwarts Challenge of the Hogwarts Houses Challenges forum on FF.net. 
> 
> Prompt: Kayaking - write about your OC going to Hogwarts for the first time.
> 
> May I introduce my first total OC of fan fiction, Mishap Ratchet? Hope you enjoy this little piece of her story. 
> 
> Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter, Ratchet would be a character in the books, not a fan fiction OC.

“Missy, are you ready?” Papa asked, leaning down to peer into her face, his face dominating her vision for several seconds. The little girl nodded, nervous, but knowing they would be late – Papa kept checking his watch – if he took to the time to reassure her one more time that using the fireplace like this was perfectly alright.

Papa smiled and Mishap could not help but smile back at him – he did not do that nearly often enough, Dingy liked to say, and “that’s why that poor girl doesn’t have another Mummy yet, dear thing”, so the ‘poor girl’ in question made it a point to always, _always_ smile back at her Papa.

“Good. Just remember to hold on tight to Papa, okay?” Again the little girl nodded, gripping the sides of her father’s robes (he didn’t usually wear those at home – they felt strange to her) tight in two small fists as they stepped into the fireplace, Papa grabbing a handful of powder from the dish on the mantel.

He put a big hand on her back, holding her close, and tossed the powder down at their feet, saying in a firm and clear voice, “Hogwarts!” Green flames roared up and little Mishap hid her face in Papa’s robes, biting back a shriek at the sudden sense of motion and magic. Then her feet hit the floor and Papa pulled her along with him, out of the fireplace and into a large, stone-walled room utterly unlike the Ministry office they had just left behind.

“Ah, Mister Ratchet! Thank you for filling in on such short notice,” a voice greeted them as Papa coughed once and dusted off both himself and Mishap, who was a little too stunned to move just yet. “I know Aurors usually have better things to do – ah, and who is this?”

Mishap, finally reassured the room was not going to go spinning off again, had just lifted her head to fully inspect her new surroundings when a stranger’s face quite suddenly took up her view. Startled, the little girl just blinked at the very old witch (her face was even more lined than Dingy’s), leaving her father to respond for her.

“My daughter, Missy – I, ah, wouldn’t have brought her,” the stranger’s face moved out of her immediate eyesight as the woman straightened to look at her father, allowing the girl to try to look around the room, “but my neighbor…” Papa cleared his throat, which he only did when he wanted to change the subject from something he thought he should not mention. “I promise, she’s very well-behaved. She won’t interfere with administration of the tests.”

“Oh, I’m sure! Quite an adorable child, Mister Ratchet.” Again the stranger’s face popped right in front of Mishap’s, causing her to draw back at the unexpected closeness, though the smile at least was a friendly one. “I wasn’t aware you had a wife or children – though I suppose it explains why a young, fit thing like you would be doing an old-timer’s work instead of being out in the field. How old is she?”

“Five.” When she glanced up at Papa’s face, she could see the tight smile on his face, the kind he got when he was trying to be polite, and knew the stranger’s words had hit one of Papa’s sore spots. He only smiled that smile when someone talked about Mummy or asked about Mishap’s name – which was a lot like talking about Mummy, since Mummy named her.

Intuitive, like most children, she let go of his robes in favor of taking her father’s hand and tugging just enough to bring his gaze to hers. “Are we inside the castle now, Papa?” She heard the woman murmur, “Oh, how precious,” but her eyes stayed on her Papa as he looked down at her and smiled.

“Yes, Missy, we’re inside.” Papa always said she was smart – he knew what she had done, asking that question, and his smile said enough.

“Can we go look around?”

“Not yet. Papa has to go and do some work right now. But later, alright?”

“Okay, Papa.”

The witch was beaming when they both looked back at her. “Do you need me to walk you down to the Great Hall?” she asked, looking from Mishap to her father.

“No, thank you. I remember my way.”

“Oh, that’s right; you graduated from here just a few years ago, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Papa said, already heading for the door. “I would love to stay and chat but…”

“Yes, of course!” The witch laughed – Dingy would have had unkind things to say about her voice, things that made Mishap giggle and Papa scold even though he laughed too. “An examiner mustn’t be late!”

Papa smiled politely over his shoulder at the witch, but breathed out a relieved sigh as they entered the corridor and turned right – Mishap was proud of herself for remembering which direction was which. Then she forgot to be proud as she saw the paintings on the wall. The _moving_ paintings on the wall. Her mouth fell open and she craned her neck around as Papa hurried down the hall, having to all but drag her to keep her moving.

And the paintings were just the _start_. Because in the next hallway there were suits of armor whose heads twisted to follow their passage. On the next, she saw staircases that detached themselves from landings and turned so they led to a completely different place. Then there was a _ghost_!

Everyone they passed wore robes like Papa did when he went to work, some plain black and others of different colors. Mishap wished _she_ was wearing robes, but Papa had dressed her in her usual clothes, shorts and a T-shirt Dingy had given her for Easter with a bunny on it – she didn’t even _own_ any robes.

By the time they reached the Great Hall, her neck was sore from the number of times she had whipped her head around to look at something. Even inside the room, she could not stop _gaping_ at everything in sight – from the flags to the tables to the floating candles and the _sky_ visible up above.

Papa, of course, was too focused on getting to work to notice her distraction. He pulled her across the un-cluttered room, to the slightly raised area at the back, and sat her down on the steps. “Stay put and behave,” he told her – usually an unnecessary reminder, but Mishap barely heard him then, nodding vaguely as she leaned to the side to stare at the group of students being ushered into the room.

Would _they_ be performing magic? Was that what Papa was here for? _Would she get to watch?_

It seemed she would, because Papa accepted her distracted agreement and moved to speak briefly with another, much older wizard before stepping off to the side. A moment later, a student approached him, the black robed witch looking nervous. Papa – being Papa – forgot to smile, instead launching straight into the test material. Mishap, who thought Dingy would have fussed at her father for not smiling and thought maybe she should go remind him for the absent woman, forgot about it as the teenage witch raised her wand and began.

The bright, quick flashes, the increasingly confident motions of the wand as her father nodded approval of each spell, captivated Mishap to the point that she could not look away. Until a sharp _bang_ from the other side of the room forced her to. She did not know what had happened – she only saw the aftermath – but two robed figures – not students, she knew enough to know that – bent over a third laying on the floor, and the other tests had halted.

Whatever it was, it was quickly dealt with, the unconscious student lifted with magic and taken from the room by the… teachers? A beat after the doors closed behind the group, the testing resumed. Properly distracted from her father’s work, Mishap was now free to watch the other examiners and students, interest as avid as before, if a little more wary – accidents, apparently, did happen, and it wasn’t a pretty picture when they did.

However, nothing more seemed to go seriously wrong – several students mixed up jinxes and their counters, but the results were not as dire as that first misfortune. And despite seeing the same spells performed multiple times, Mishap never lost interest in the proceedings, her eyes taking in every bit of magic cast hungrily, desperately. The fireplace may have been disorienting and a little frightening, but this – this was amazing.

Hours later, when the examinations wrapped up and the little girl should have been exhausted by the long day, her father found her “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed”, as Dingy liked to say. Papa looked tired, but Mishap was about to burst with excitement and restrained herself only long enough for them to reach the hallway back to the fireplace.

“That was _magic_ , Papa!” she exclaimed, nearly jumping in her delight. “ _Real_ magic!”

Her father looked down at her, his eyebrows raised up like he was surprised. “Yes,” he said after a moment, a little smile curving his mouth up. “It was.”

“Will _I_ be able to do that someday Papa?”

The little smile became bigger and Mishap’s face almost hurt from how big hers was. “Yes, Missy; you’ll take those same tests in about ten years.”

The little girl squealed, practically dancing in place beside her father and making him laugh quietly as he tugged gently to get her walking again. “I can’t wait to tell Dingy!”

Mishap barely registered the way Papa froze at those words before he pulled her to face him, suddenly crouched in front of her. All traces of amusement were gone from his face, replaced by too much seriousness, effectively quelling the little girl’s enthusiasm.

“Missy, you _cannot_ tell Dingy about this.”

“But… why? Dingy’s my friend.”

Papa… his face scrunched up, not like when he was mad about something, but like when he stubbed his toe on a toy Mishap forgot to put away. Like what he was going to say hurt. “Yes, she’s your friend – she’s _our_ friend – but… Missy, she’s not like us. She’s not… she’s not a witch. She’s a Muggle.”

“A what, Papa?”

“A Muggle, Missy. A person who isn’t magic.”

“Oh.” Mishap thought she understood the word, with the way Papa said it, but… “Why does that mean I can’t tell her?”

Again Papa’s face scrunched up, only this time he looked away, running a hand over his face with a sigh before looking back at her. “It’s the law, Missy. She can’t know about magic.”

“Why?”

“Because… just because, alright? You’ll understand when you’re older.” If Papa had sounded any other way when he said that, Mishap would have kept asking – ‘you’ll understand when you’re older’ was not an answer the little girl would normally accept. But her father sounded tired, and sad, and Mishap finally just nodded, feeling a bit sad herself.

“Alright.”

Papa sighed again, but this time it was relieved, and gave her a little smile – like clockwork, she gave him a little smile back. “How about an ice cream when we get back? You were very good today. I think you deserve one.”

The prospect of ice cream was always a cheering notion and the little smile got a bit bigger. “Yeah,” Mishap said, her voice not even close to its former level of feeling, but much lighter than it had been the last few words.

Papa smiled, pulling her in for a hug. “That’s my happy girl.” He stood, still smiling, and together they began to walk down the corridor once more. This time, as they retraced their path to the room with the fireplace, Papa talked – telling her all about the castle they were in, about the school and its teachers, its students, the paintings and the suits of armor.

By the time they reached the fireplace, Mishap had almost forgotten about the fact that she couldn’t share any of this with Dingy. Instead, she was excited, and as they stepped past the grate and Papa tossed the powder down, she looked out into the office they were leaving behind as if she could see far beyond it, to every hall and staircase and room inside Hogwarts. She could hardly wait to return.


End file.
